Tell Your Customer What You’ll Do for Them

A foundation of Amazing Service is making a promise to your customers.
I call this your Unified Message but people call it many different
things. Recently I saw a video produced by Jiffy Lube in which their
president discusses the three promises they make to their customers.

This is a step in the right direction. They are telling the world
what they will do for their customers and how they will treat them. And
they’ve made it simple. Their promises are:

1. Fast service

2. Quality products

3. Fair value.

My first comment is, who decided on these? How much input did
customers and employee have? Your promises should be developed from
customers, employees and management – if you want them to be relevant
and doable.

Their next step is actually two steps.

One is to make sure they do what they promise with every customer
every time. In this video, the president explains how they intend to
make this happen.

The second step is to make it easy and convenient for customers and
employees to offer feedback about these promises. They want to answer
at least two questions:

How is Jiffy Lube doing?

How can they do better?

If they have an effective feedback system in place, this will help
them know if their customers feel they are keeping their promise. They
can hire mystery shoppers and auditors all day long but the best
feedback comes from real customers.

How about your company? Do you have a customer promise? If so, how is it working?